I thought Mats played alright. He was really the lone prop today, Hooth is a lock and Aloiai is a backrower, Sue wasn't overly involved, Grant replaced Mats.

You can't get into him for that high shot, it was hardly careless or reckless, just bounced off the footy.

Thing about Mats is he is one of the few forwards that really sticks with his tackles. I love it, he really flattens the oppositions and he's tidy enough laterally as well, working from marker. His hitups are alright; he doesn't make made metres but that's not the gameplan frankly - none of our forwards are getting much over 100m in any game this year.

The idea seems to be sharing out the work - decent hitups, quick PTB, tackle your ring off, get subbed. 4 blokes rotate and run 70-90 metres, the back 3 stay on as long as possible and hold the middle.

He made 55m and you think that's alright?from our Representative prop forward who should have stood up because of the fact that he was the only starting prop.

To my eyes 4 plays lost us that game, 2 from Nofo 2 from Matulino.

Both of them have no one else to blame, Nofos directly led to tries.
Matulinos indirectly but crucial plays at crucial times, when I found out he only made 55m that just topped it off.
Not good enough

I thought Mats played alright. He was really the lone prop today, Hooth is a lock and Aloiai is a backrower, Sue wasn't overly involved, Grant replaced Mats.

You can't get into him for that high shot, it was hardly careless or reckless, just bounced off the footy.

Thing about Mats is he is one of the few forwards that really sticks with his tackles. I love it, he really flattens the oppositions and he's tidy enough laterally as well, working from marker. His hitups are alright; he doesn't make made metres but that's not the gameplan frankly - none of our forwards are getting much over 100m in any game this year.

The idea seems to be sharing out the work - decent hitups, quick PTB, tackle your ring off, get subbed. 4 blokes rotate and run 70-90 metres, the back 3 stay on as long as possible and hold the middle.

He made 55m and you think that's alright?from our Representative prop forward who should have stood up because of the fact that he was the only starting prop.

To my eyes 4 plays lost us that game, 2 from Nofo 2 from Matulino.

Both of them have no one else to blame, Nofos directly led to tries.
Matulinos indirectly but crucial plays at crucial times, when I found out he only made 55m that just topped it off.
Not good enough

Yeah it was alright.

For starters he hasn't played rep footy in 3 years, so if he's a rep player, so is Tim Grant, so is Mahe Fonua, so is Tui.

I can think of about 20 plays that cost us the game, and don't get me wrong that Nofo and Mats contributed, but if Benji makes his 1-1 tackle on Ma'u, or the refs call a forward pass, we aren't having this conversation. What about Aloiai's dropped balls? What about Godinet's bad kick, or Liddle's missed tackles? MCK's bad pass? Benji's early tackle kicks?

I also don't agree with your argument that because he was the only proper prop we played, he should have stood up. Send out Matt Scott with a pack of cheerleaders and see how many metres he makes.

Fox Sports says Mats made 65m from 9 runs. Not great but where is his support? Sue made 65, Lawrence 92 (but he played all game), Rochow 68, Hooth 65, Grant 70, Aloiai 100.

Also the Tigers very clearly shifted the football a lot yesterday, which I believe contributed greatly to the lower metres gained across the whole pack. This is evident by the fact that every one of the back 5 made more than 100m.

By contrast Tim Mannah made 156m yesterday yet had a costly dropped ball that lead to a try. One more of those and he would have been in Matulino territory, and Mat's didn't even give up a dropped ball all game?

It's not about losing, it's more about the obvious poor efforts, lack of attention to detail and just plain dumb penalties and plays at crucial times by certain individuals.

If you think making 55m, giving away a penalty 1 minute after coming on that led to a try and not knowing it was the last tackle is good enough for an NRL prop let alone an international then I'd say you're a Tigers supporter and nothing has changed.

I thought Mats played alright. He was really the lone prop today, Hooth is a lock and Aloiai is a backrower, Sue wasn't overly involved, Grant replaced Mats.

You can't get into him for that high shot, it was hardly careless or reckless, just bounced off the footy.

Thing about Mats is he is one of the few forwards that really sticks with his tackles. I love it, he really flattens the oppositions and he's tidy enough laterally as well, working from marker. His hitups are alright; he doesn't make made metres but that's not the gameplan frankly - none of our forwards are getting much over 100m in any game this year.

The idea seems to be sharing out the work - decent hitups, quick PTB, tackle your ring off, get subbed. 4 blokes rotate and run 70-90 metres, the back 3 stay on as long as possible and hold the middle.

The problem is stats are just that stats .. stats do not take into account what happens off the ball , hitting and sticking in tackles , stopping off loads etc so in a way they are misleading... look at Woods stats 180 mts what ever a game but his defence is weak , his hit ups are week ,slow play the balls so stats are stats .

Stats are just stats I agree, to an extent though.
Are you gonna say stats are just stats if he's making 40m every week for the next 10 weeks? No, so stats are just stats only when it suits your argument.

My whole beef with Matalino is firstly he hasnt impressed me much so far but in particular in this game I was wondering when he was coming on for his second stint, and was expecting him to have a positive impact since the game was on the line and what I saw was a penalty that led to a Parra try and him getting tackled on the last having no idea what tackle it was at a crucial time in the game.
To top it off, the dismal stats to go with it and I thought it was time be deserved a thread because no one else would dare say anything negative about him.
I'll continue to point out poor performance if I see it, I don't care who they are or what anyone else thinks.
I won't go out of my way look for them but if something stands out to me I'll mention it, that's what the forum is about isn't it.

Stats are just stats I agree, to an extent though.
Are you gonna say stats are just stats if he's making 40m every week for the next 10 weeks? No, so stats are just stats only when it suits your argument.

My whole beef with Matalino is firstly he hasnt impressed me much so far but in particular in this game I was wondering when he was coming on for his second stint, and was expecting him to have a positive impact since the game was on the line and what I saw was a penalty that led to a Parra try and him getting tackled on the last having no idea what tackle it was at a crucial time in the game.
To top it off, the dismal stats to go with it and I thought it was time be deserved a thread because no one else would dare say anything negative about him.
I'll continue to point out poor performance if I see it, I don't care who they are or what anyone else thinks.
I won't go out of my way look for them but if something stands out to me I'll mention it, that's what the forum is about isn't it.

Benji threw it to a front rower on the last tackle. He is more to blame for that than the guy that got tackled. Benji has fallen off since his injury. The brilliant last tackle options and scares good bombs have been non-existent the last two weeks.

Stats are just stats I agree, to an extent though.
Are you gonna say stats are just stats if he's making 40m every week for the next 10 weeks? No, so stats are just stats only when it suits your argument.

My whole beef with Matalino is firstly he hasnt impressed me much so far but in particular in this game I was wondering when he was coming on for his second stint, and was expecting him to have a positive impact since the game was on the line and what I saw was a penalty that led to a Parra try and him getting tackled on the last having no idea what tackle it was at a crucial time in the game.
To top it off, the dismal stats to go with it and I thought it was time be deserved a thread because no one else would dare say anything negative about him.
I'll continue to point out poor performance if I see it, I don't care who they are or what anyone else thinks.
I won't go out of my way look for them but if something stands out to me I'll mention it, that's what the forum is about isn't it.

Benji threw it to a front rower on the last tackle. He is more to blame for that than the guy that got tackled. Benji has fallen off since his injury. The brilliant last tackle options and scares good bombs have been non-existent the last two weeks.

The problem is stats are just that stats .. stats do not take into account what happens off the ball , hitting and sticking in tackles , stopping off loads etc so in a way they are misleading... look at Woods stats 180 mts what ever a game but his defence is weak , his hit ups are week ,slow play the balls so stats are stats .

Well that's not exactly true.

Stats take into account whatever they are designed to take into account. Certainly a single dataset has limited application, only speaks to a specific aspect of the game. And data itself doesn't have an opinion, so yes, humans are required to interpret them. The idea is however, with a sufficient armory of stats, you can start to develop well-supported arguments.

I agree however for the purposes of the casual fan, we don't have access to the same depth of statistical analysis that clubs and coaches do. Bet your bottom dollar they do have stats for what happens off the ball, hitting and sticking, offload prevention etc.

The problem for fans is, the opposite of a stats-supported argument is a impression-supported argument. Along the lines of "my gut tells me...", or "what I noticed was...". People's impressions are demonstrably flawed and easily manipulated, so is human memory, so you need stats as part of the discussion.

And that's why fans will never fully understand the selection and on-field play strategies of the coach, because they will just never have access to the data and knowledge that the coach has.

He's been great this season, but less so against Parra. The high shot was careless, inexcusably so given the context. But a lot of players made a lot of poor mistakes. Getting tackled on the last was all on Benji. You can't expect a prop getting tackled at the line to miraculously come up with a match winning play like that. Benji had another brain explosion, forgot the tackle count and cost us a last shot at the win. Inexcusable by a so called leader of the team!